Digital imaging systems enable the user to manipulate images such as those captured by a digital camera, scanned from paper originals, or generated by other digital imaging software systems. One such operation involves assembling multiple images into a single larger image, forming a “collage”, or an arrangement of images which is itself an image. Software tools, such as the LumaPix::FotoFusion™ software application published by LumaPix, simplify the creation of collages with tools that enable the user to position, resize, and interactively crop images in order to generate the larger collage.
To create a collage, the user typically selects images from a repository, then brings them onto a collage surface, or “Canvas”, where further editing (such as rotating, mirroring, or resizing member images) is possible. The act of producing the collage may be aided by tools such as the subdivision of the canvas into smaller, aligned frames. In many cases the user must manually populate the empty frames with images from the repository. In other prior art, there exist “templates”, or pre-defined arrangements of frames within canvases, which can be populated with a selected set of images with a single action by the user. While this technique requires less work of the user than manual placement, it also restricts the variety of collage compositions to only those alternatives made possible by re-ordering the insertion of selected images into pre-arranged frames in the template; the overall structure of the generated collage remains identical to the template collage. While this uniformity may be desirable for certain applications, the results become monotonous for other applications where variety and uniqueness are appreciated. Novel collage layouts retain visual interest, a desirable trait when viewing collections of collages.
It is therefore desirable to provide a method and system for producing two-dimensional arrangements that obviates or mitigates the disadvantages of the prior art. In particular, it is desirable to provide a method and system for automatically generating unique arrangements of images, ideally with the ability to produce novel varieties of arrangements that have been “inspired” by a selected template layout.